Soviet patriotism in a comparative perspective: a passion for oxymora

The official patriotic narrative that emerged in the USSR during the Stalin period shows the continuity of imperial models that served to constitute “love of the fatherland”. This article presents several concepts about the formation of imperial patriotism prevalent in the course of history; it identifies tendencies of interaction between cultural tradition and foreign models. It also shows the principal possibility of combining patriotism with other forms of unifying and mobilizing discourses. The official patriotic discourse of the Stalin era is analyzed as an eclectic ideological construct that, to a large extent, relied on the tradition of imperial patriotic education. The constants distinguishing Russian-Soviet patriotism include the representation of Russia’s imperial past, viewing the question of a multi-national state through the paradigm of the empire’s “civilizing mission”, and patriotism as an integral part of public political education. Some of the elements fundamental for Soviet “love of the fatherland” are preserved in modern Russian patriotism as for instance in the form of “Soviet” nostalgia or representations of militant “statehood”.     

What Facilitates Cultural Entrepreneurship? – A Study of Indian Cultural Entrepreneurs

The importance of a ‘cultural industry’ to a national economy and the development of a “creative society” has grown increasingly. However, research on cultural entrepreneurship is in its early stages and is yet to catch the attention of mainstream entrepreneurship and creativity scholars. In this article the objective is to enhance our knowledge and understanding of the key aspects that cultural entrepreneurs find facilitating their entrepreneurship. Studying Indian cultural entrepreneurs and applying a qualitative method, this paper identifies seven such aspects: cultural value creation, intrinsic motivation and external recognition, minimized risk, contextual understanding, innovation and learning, perseverance and ethical pursuit of cultural activity, and social networks.     

Psychoanalysis’s Cultural Dissociation Meets Ethnic Minorities: Reply to Commentary by Kimberlyn Leary

Dr. Leary highlighted variance within ethnic culture in her commentary, but I wished she had spoken instead about cultural trauma. My paper was about trauma-based dissociative process: Some immigrant women attempt to bury their ethnic cultural experiences deeply into their psychic shadows, as elements of their culture’s values and practices constitute aspects of the very nature of their trauma. Leary’s notion of race as an adaptive challenge brings to attention the importance of making explicit racial “loyalties, values, and habits” in clinical situations. I argue strongly that psychoanalysis has dissociated its cultural identity, making its encounters with ethnic minorities that much more problematic. I ask on the behalf of ethnic minority patients (and ethnic minority mental health practitioners and graduate students), What could be gained if psychoanalysis could reveal and own its cultural identity?     

Examining the link between institutional and community violence: Toward a new cultural paradigm

New explanations of cultural processes are sought, in part, because existing hypotheses are at odds with new wave contemporary empirical findings. Namely, a growing body of scholarship calls into question the “racial invariance” hypothesis proposed by Sampson and Wilson (1995), particularly as it applies to Latinos. Based on these findings, it stands to reason that culture, in addition to structure, may be a property of communities that helps to explain racial/ethnic involvement in crime. This article explores the link between institutional and community violence, and then compares traditional perspectives on the influence of culture on violence (e.g. Wolfgang and Ferracuti’s subculture of violence) with newer, more dynamic conceptualizations of the cultural influence of violence in both institutional and community settings (e.g. Sampson and Bean’s relational theory of culture). The authors consider how both institutional and community violence may be explained using a new cultural paradigm, which moves beyond traditional views of “culture as values” to a new relational theory of “culture in action”. They present a model for understanding, and researching, culture that is based on the notion that value systems in institutions and neighborhoods influence one another. Offering examples from recent research on prison culture, they examine the key dimensions of this new cultural paradigm, which describes culture as “intersubjective, performative, cognitive, relational, and world-making”. The authors conclude that further examination of the reciprocal relationship between institutional and community culture is needed before we can begin to consider the policy implications of the “culture in action” paradigm.     

The Carnival’s Edge: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Charlie Hebdo</Emphasis> and Theories of Comedy

This article reexamines the satire of Charlie Hebdo through the lens of comedy theory and cultural studies. Drawing upon Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of “the carnivalesque” and Linda Hutcheon’s concept of “irony’s edge,” it considers the wide variety of potential meanings that are encoded within Hebdo’s highly controversial comedy and religious representations. Introducing the notion of the “ambigramic carnival,” I argue that competing notions of hegemony in French culture encourage radically different understandings of the ethical and political implications of Hebdo’s content. Ultimately, I contend that while Hebdo’s approach to satire is in no way responsible for the terroristic violence visited upon the magazine, the publication nonetheless crafted a style intended to evoke a range of responses, including profound anger. As an empirical companion to this theoretical approach, the article then turns to coverage of the Hebdo massacre in the Jewish press, arguing that in the United States the Forward used the Hebdo story to represent Jewish empowerment and disempowerment simultaneously.     

Person and Community in the Culture of Entertainment

Entertainment is so pervasive and influential in contemporary society that it is fair to say we live in an entertainment culture. What are the political, ethical, and spiritual implications of such a cultural environment? Building on the analysis offered in the author’s recent book Caught in Play: How Entertainment Works on You (Stromberg, 2009), this essay argues that entertainment is not susceptible to global moral evaluation, it is not “good” or “bad.” Rather, entertainment is a cultural system through which commitment to certain values is generated. This process, and these values, need to be brought into the light of day and assessed in open and critical discussion.     

History, Present Situation, and Problems of Chinese Psychology of Religion

There have been few research studies on the psychology of religion in Mainland China because of the “leftist” ideology that shaped the People’s Republic of China from its foundation until the introduction of reform and open policy. Since the 1980s, research in the field of psychology of religion in Mainland China has made remarkable progress. The main efforts include translating and introducing representative works from the former Soviet Union and the West, while theoretical studies have concentrated mainly on the origins, features, functions, and schools of psychology of religion. Researchers have developed new measurement tools based on local culture in psychology of religion. Empirical studies pay special attention to the relationship between religious belief and mental health, the features of religious thinking of the Chinese, the psychological state of professionals, and characteristic emotions of religious experiences as well as their correlation with biological processes. The problems that currently exist in the field in Mainland China include the following: lack of critical in-depth studies on the history of Western psychology of religion, absence of diversity in research methods, and disconnection of theoretical study from practical application. Obviously, these issues should influence the direction of future efforts.     

How We See Ourselves: A Resident’s Reflection on the Class Play

The “class play” is an annual tradition in residency training programs and medical schools that celebrates the end of the academic year. It is also a locally generated narrative that reveals important components of an institution’s values, culture, and group dynamics. Exploring the class play is a reflexive exercise that allows one to reflect on his or her professional development and place in the department in a structural, historical, and experience-near driven way. In this way, the creation of and examining of the class play may be seen as an opportunity to understand and expand upon medicine’s Hidden Curriculum.     

Jungian Analysis of the Chinese Mythological Image of Sun Wukong

This paper examines the symbolism of the cultural image Sun Wukong (the Monkey King), a Chinese legendary hero, and how it influenced an eight-year-old boy’s psychic development. Through an analysis of Sun Wukong’s life from his birth to attaining Buddhahood, a three-phase healing process is identified in Sun Wukong’s tale and the psychotherapeutic process: “naming and initiating,” “nurturing and taming,” and “transforming and transcending,” proposed by Dr. Heyong Shen. Sandplay visually highlighted these key clinical changes in conscious awareness and developmental behaviour influencing the boy’s individuation process. Images found either in cultural traditions or spontaneously emerging from the unconscious in individuals are of significance in human life, offering pathways to psychic healing and development. Further, myths and cultural resources used in clinical work demonstrate that having cultural competency is invaluable in Jungian analysis. Pathogenic and health-maintenance factors of culture can be explored in future clinical practice and research.     

Skin to skin: language in the Soviet education of deaf–blind children,the 1920s and 1930s

The article deals with surdotiflopedagogika, a doctrine of special education for deaf–blind–mute children as it was developed in the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s. In the spirit of social constructivism of the early Stalinist society, surdotiflopedagogika presents itself as a technology for the manufacture of socially useful human beings out of handicapped children with sight and hearing impairments, “half-animals, half-plants”. Surdotiflopedagogika’s institutionalization and rationale as these were evolving under the special patronage of Maxim Gorkij are analysed. Its experimental aspect is also discussed. Exploring and implementing the most advanced ideas in the technology of communication, surdotiflopedagogika sought to compensate for the loss of speech, hearing, and sight by supplying the child with mechanical and human prostheses, including other people (assistants), technical devices, techniques of the body, and multiple communication codes to be translated from one into another. In the case of Soviet deaf-blind education, the Soviet subject appears as a technologically enhanced, collectively shared, and extended body in a permanent process of translation, internal as well as external. Technologies of language and acculturation that are of particular interest. Surdotiflopedagogika’s method as it appears in the theoretical writing of Ivan Afanasjevi? Sokoljanskij (1889–1960), the teacher of the legendary deaf-blind author and educator Ol’ga Ivanovna Skorokhodova (1914?–1982) are given particular attention.     

Universalism in cultural history and the meaning of the Russian Revolution: on some aspects of cultural theory in the work of Mikhail Lifšic

Mikhail Lif?ic (1905–1983) is one of the most contradictory and to this date poorly understood authors of the Soviet era. He represented an independent Marxist position, but one internally characterized by the tense relationship between Marxism and the philosophy of Hegel. This relationship, concerning historical philosophical questions, is the subject of this essay. In the 1930s, as “historical materialism” was canonized in the USSR, a development that Soviet civilization understood as the “beginning of the end of (universal) history”, Lif?ic drafted a different, skeptical summary of the revolutionary era. However, he remained loyal to both the concept of universal history and the examination of Russian-Soviet cultural history within the framework of this concept. With the help of a text from Lif?ic from the 1930s as well as his later (early 1980s) reflection and remembrance of the ideological debates of the 1930s, this essay will show that Lif?ic’ reconstruction of idealism in Marxism was no accident, but rather a necessary movement in thought. This, in turn, enabled him to give a new account of the historical experience of the October Revolution.     

Doing emotions: The role of culture in everyday emotions

Emotional experience is culturally constructed. In this review, we discuss evidence that cultural differences in emotions are purposeful, helping an individual to meet the mandate of being a good person in their culture. We also discuss research showing that individual’s fit to the cultural emotion norm is associated with well-being, and suggest that this link may be explained by the fact that normative emotions meet the cultural mandate. Finally, we discuss research that sheds light on some of the collective processes of emotion construction: social interactions and emotion representations are geared towards promoting emotions that are conducive to the cultural mandate. In conclusion, we suggest that individuals become part of their culture by “doing emotions” in a way that is consistent with the cultural mandate, and that in intercultural interactions, emotions can be literally “at cross purposes”: each person’s emotions are constructed to fit the purposes of their own culture.     

解释框架对文化混搭产品评价的影响——比较焦点和解释策略的调节效应

文化混搭产品因涉及到不同国家的文化符号的同时呈现, 可能导致母国文化的完整性与生命力受到威胁, 引发外国文化入侵母国文化的感知进而降低消费者的产品评价。本研究从文化混搭产品的营销传播视角出发, 基于前人的研究基础之上, 探讨了不同信息表述框架策略的采用会如何影响消费者的文化入侵感知进而影响他们对文化混搭产品的评价, 并重点探究了它可能存在的两个边界条件, 即消费者的比较焦点和企业的不同解释策略。两个实验的结果不仅再一次验证了前人所得出的研究结论, 即文化混搭产品采用“外国文化-母国文化”的框架策略时, 会使消费者产生外国文化改变了母国文化的感知, 导致消费者对产品的评价要显著低于采用“母国文化-外国文化”的框架策略, 其中感知文化入侵起着完全中介的作用。更重要的是, 深入揭示出上述的这种不同文化混搭框架效应只有在启动的是消费者的差异性聚焦以及企业采用的是属性解释策略时才存在, 而当启动的是消费者的相似性聚焦以及企业采用关系解释策略时, 这一效应将会消失。本研究不仅深入剖析出了引发消费者对文化混搭现象产生排斥性反应的内在机理, 拓展了前人研究结论的普适性, 也为企业的文化混搭产品的营销推广提供了有用的实践启示。     

Training to Think Culturally: A Multidimensional Comparative Framework

A multidimensional, comparative training framework is designed to integrate culture with all aspects of family therapy. Culture is viewed as occurring in multiple contexts that create common “cultural borderlands” as well as diversity; unpredictability and possibility, as well as regularity and constraint. The framework proposes a search for basic parameters to help therapists think comparatively and pluralistically about families’ cultural configurations and meanings. Further, the parameters chosen — ecological context, migration/acculturation, organization, and life cycle — are used to heighten therapists’ awareness about the “situated knowledge” of their own professional and personal culture. This approach recognizes the potential complexity of both the family's and the therapist's cultural location or ecological niche, and encourages curiosity in the therapeutic conversation rather than reliance on potentially stereotyping, ethnic-focused information.     

MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE: SCORSESE’S “THE WOLF OF WALL STREET” THROUGH A PSYCHOANALYTIC LENS

In this essay I wish to present some reflections on Jordan Belfort, the protagonist of the movie “The Wolf of Wall Street” from a psychoanalytic prism. The movie, “The Wolf of Wall Street”, is a 2013 black comedy film directed by Martin Scorsese and adapted by Terence Winter from Belfort’s memoir (2007) of the same name. This movie has already been analyzed from cultural and historical perspectives, with the protagonist representing American culture of the 1980s. I will first summarize some of these views, and then present my psychoanalytic perspective of Jordan’s wish to become “Master of the Universe” (Wolfe, 1987; Grunberger, 1993), as expressed through his abuse of drugs, hyper-sexuality, and his aggressive and self-destructive behavior. As the craving for omnipotence and immortality is a universal wish that has existed from time immemorial, I will draw an analogy between certain aspects and symbolic elements in “The Wolf of Wall Street” and Wagner’s (1848–1872) four epic operas “Der Ring des Nibelungen.” I will conclude with a brief reference to the charismatic appeal of a man like Jordan to the general public.     

Culture and attention: Recent empirical findings and new directions in cultural psychology

Over the past 3 decades, cultural psychologists have empirically investigated the influence of cultural meaning systems on human psychology. Under the rubric of holistic versus analytic thought, researchers have demonstrated that there are substantial cultural variations in social cognition, and that such variations are observable even in so‐called fundamental psychological processes, such as attention. The aim of this paper is to review 3 major themes in culture and attention: (1) culture and attention to nonsocial scenes, (2) culture and attention to social scenes, and (3) culture and aesthetics. The paper also discusses 4 major strands of research that could be considered important candidates to further advance the understanding of culture and attention: (1) research on “culture ? human psychological processes,” where we investigate how culture influences modes of attention; (2) research on “human psychology ? cultural processes,” where we investigate how those who hold a specific mode of attention create cultural products and tangible representations of culturally shared meanings; (3) research on cultural neuroscience, where we investigate underlying mechanisms and processes of specific modes of attention; and (4) research on cultural transmission processes, where we investigate how specific modes of attention is taught by adults and internalized by children.     

Aging,memory loss,and Alzheimer’s disease: What do refugees from the former Soviet Union think?

ABSTRACT

Since the mid-1970s, approximately 700,000 émigrés from the former Soviet Union (FSU), most of Jewish descent, settled in the United States. Now, 25 or more years post-emigration, they have “aged in place” in the United States, but their values, beliefs, and attitudes about growing old, memory changes, and Alzheimer’s disease remain grounded in their earlier life experiences. Based on findings from a study of the social and cultural factors affecting beliefs about Alzheimer’s disease, aging, and memory loss, this article examines how past life experiences, the immigration experience, and cultural values affect Russian-speaking refugees’ beliefs and views about aging, memory loss, and Alzheimer’s disease.     

The Lure of Pan(en)theism

Abstract

This response to Karmen MacKendrick’s work follows the thematic trail of desire through Divine Enticement (2012), seeking to clarify the relationship in MacKendrick’s work between God and creation. While MacKendrick expresses an initial desire for an “immanent divine,” especially in relation to the work of St. Augustine, she later feels more drawn to “a world that in its beauty calls out the name of its creator” than to a world “in which the creator is simply present.” This brief engagement explores MacKendrick’s logic of seduction in relation to the panentheist and pantheist theologies of Cusa and Bruno, ultimately suggesting that “immanence” only collapses the distance of desire if creation is understood to be finite and self-identical.